Tag Archives: Seven AACU Principles of Excellence

And ALL truly means all, K-12 and higher ed. As with most binding plans designed to govern and transform the “entire educational experience” of the 21st century, the blueprints were sitting somewhere no one was likely to look. Especially since it is a higher ed document by one of its governing groups.http://www.aacu.org/leap/documents/GlobalCentury_final.pdf It just happens to mention that theses are Outcomes and then Principles of Excellence that apply to students in K-12 schools as well. The accreditors then know all this and will enforce this vision out of your sight. The central office staff will know it. I have no doubt that this is what is behind that new EdLeader 21 Coalition of Suburban Districts as their Supers take those districts where the urban districts have already gone.

When you add what is in that AACU link to the AACSU initiatives we went over in the last post. Plus this AACSU Seven Revolutions Vision for Educating Globally Competent Citizens and we truly do have a noetic revolution going on in our midst. http://aascu7revolutions.pbworks.com/w/page/39316693/FrontPage?mode=embedded gives you something to ponder on the Mindsets being created in these current and future voters, especially with governance in the future listed as one of the 7 Revolutions. Like all things that might be controversial if known accurately in education and public policy, the rhetoric of this has now been toned down to Global Engagement. But the 7 Rev Framework remains and as I am about to explain, also applies to what is expected from high school graduates.

It’s no accident that the 7 Rev developer institutions have large teacher colleges. Some of them, like Kennesaw State, have huge programs, especially for continuing education. And that is certainly a stealthy way to get a revolution to invisibly trickle down. Influential but mostly out of sight. The preferred 21st century transformational method as we now know.

I am going to quote from the doc but this is one I really do urge everyone to download and read. This is IT. As page 14 says: “These essential learning outcomes should become the guiding compass for student accomplishment in the twenty-first century.” They are to be the guiding principles for the learning tasks, the curriculum, the projects, the videos, and all those poorly understood assessments. Because the focus will be using content to engage “with big questions, both contemporary and enduring,” in comes the Climate Change materials that National Geographic has prepared that many scientists regard as false. http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/encyclopedia/global-warming/?ar_a=1

So polar bears may not actually be endangered and we have had 17 years without increases in global temps but schoolchildren are not to know that. Influential false beliefs change behaviors, prompt action, and make future citizens willing to tolerate Invasive Governments at every level. Then NG nicely gives a link to UNEP so teachers can download those materials as well for the K-12 classroom. http://www.unep.org/tools/default.asp?ct=clim is that link. Remember factual reality affects actual consequences, but personal perceptions of reality guide an individual’s future behavior. And now education is deliberately splitting factual reality from perceptions. Without notice.

The document by the way is from 2007. So while what will become known as CCSSI was being planned but before it was official, a governing document of the defining implementation principles once again was published. Where few but silly Miss Marple with her determination to track down the relevant blueprints would ever look. Think of those Essential Learning Outcomes as laying out future Personality Characteristics for All Students. Best described, in my opinion, as specifying Who each Student Will Be Inside, Be Able to Do, and Be Ready to Act on, and What they Will Believe. As the report says “beginning in school.” No wonder preschool too has now been targeted for transformation and monitoring for social and emotional learning.

After all it takes time to ensure that “all students” have “an informed concern for the larger good.” To be guided in life by always asking “what is most worth doing?” Nothing personal to my teacher readers, but an ed degree, or a political science doctorate, or urban planning masters do not qualify anyone to create a curriculum designed to mandate that attitude. And I would be the first to concede, neither does a law degree. That should be an individual decision backed up by the wisdom of the ages. And no I am not referring to the Dalai Llama’s version of the wisdom of the ages. Which is part of the reason contemplative education is so troubling. That takes the personal decision away by grounding action in unconscious feelings and school redesigned new values. But the contemplative push meshes with this new Essential Learning Outcomes perfectly.

The troubling Part 2 “From the American Century to the Global Century” laid out a strategy to make the US demise quite inevitable. Poisoned via expensive education. The report basically lays out every talking point or UN-led initiative to become the Holy Grails incorporated into all education. Then the report falsely claims (as a Phi Beta Kappa history major I may know this off the top of my head but few students today will) the following:

“Americans live in the world’s most powerful democracy. But democracy, as the founders recognized [not], is much more than a design for government and lawmaking. Rather, it is a framework for a special kind of society in which citizens must take mutual responsibility for the quality of their own communities and their shared lives. Democracies are founded on a distinctive web of values: human dignity, equality, justice, responsibility, and freedom.”

That has to be John Dewey and Martha Nussbaum’s definition of freedom which is all about the larger good being fulfilled. No wonder we keep finding obligations throughout the actual definition of Career Ready that just reek of Communitarianism. Creating that belief in each student is an Essential Learning Outcome. And the report even asks ” How do we cultivate what Martha Nussbaum has called the “narrative imagination” so that graduates are able to engage diverse communities and other societies? How do we prepare citizens to address the growing and destabilizing divisions between those with hope and those who still live on the margins of our own and other societies.”

Now doesn’t that goal mirror the reasons laid out in the last post for using education to mobilize low income children of color? You can organize students and parents but this vision cannot make the world work the way it plans. It simply removes the mental tools that can best help the individual cope with genuine daily problems. I need to move on but Martha calls this sought view for ed “cosmopolitan education” and it is clearly why she was the IB’s Keynote Speaker on creating desired Worldviews.

I am going to quote in its entirety the AACU’s Principles of Excellence framework since it is THE governing vision for what students are to become in the 21st century, using K-12 and higher ed, and CCSSI and Democracy Projects and Global Competency etc as the cudgels to make it so. And personal data to monitor it is happening.

Principle One. Aim High–and Make Excellence Inclusive

Make the Essential Learning Outcomes a Framework for the Entire Educational Experience, Connecting School, College, Life, and Work

Use Assessment to Deepen Learning and to Establish a Culture of Shared Purpose and Continuous Improvement

I bolded that Shared Purpose to be able to point out that is describing the Community of Learners concept we have traced back to Michael Cole, Courtney Cazden, and Ann Brown’s visit to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Please also notice what the continuous improvement is in. These listed Learning Outcomes.

We will be here all day if I describe all the ways these Outcomes reflect every post I have ever written on this blog. No wonder I found what I found and we can talk about the links in comments if you like.

I just want to close by pointing out that I do track these ed reforms all over the world. I download and read those reports and frameworks too even though I do not usually mention in posts. I think committing a deliberate murder of American exceptionalism and our superpower status and the primacy of the US Constitution are all express goals of the implementation of these ed reforms. And others I know about.

But when the transformation of the US is done, the goals of these Principles of Excellence align with what I have seen in every country I have ever reviewed ed reforms in. Global indeed.

But as the criticisms of Martha Nussbaum’s cosmopolitan education have pointed out, this is citizenship for a world that has never existed. Which may not slow down all those being paid to push this vision.

But it truly ought to be a compelling concern for those of us providing the funding for this takedown of the US.